[legutierr]

“Witch burning”?

Doesn’t this phrase imply that someone is being harmed? Who is being harmed in this case?

The estate that controls the publication rights is deciding not to publish these books, and eBay is deciding not to list the books on its own platform. No one is being penalized or punished, and these entities are acting fully within their rights.

[therealjumbo]

Preventing transactions between two third parties (i.e. ebay) is economically similar to refusing to do business with another party. Except that if your in position to do the latter, you're obviously a platform for others, and thus you have a lot more unilateral power to prevent transactions between arbitrary third parties. Which is probably a lot more economic transactions than the number of transactions you engage in yourself. It's like leverage.

So the harm seems proportional to the harm done by refusing to bake that wedding cake for the gay couple.